Meet Andy Valvur

I was born in New York City, grew up in Japan, California and Switzerland, got a Bachelor and a Master’s degree in International Relations and when it came to choosing a career as a diplomat or a stand up comedian, it wasn’t even close. I figured that as a diplomat, they would never let me say what I really wanted to say. But as a comic, no one could stop me.

So, I started doing stand-up in San Francisco in the 80′s, in clubs like the Holy City Zoo, Cobb’s and The Other Cafe. From there I moved to Los Angeles where I worked at the Comedy Store and on to New York where I was a regular at the IMPROV and Catch A Rising Star.

There I got into television for a brief moment as the host of a travel news show on the Travel Channel, wrote for E! Entertainment Channel, Globe TV, and appeared on Nash Bridges.

But I like writing and do a lot of it for folks like the New York Times, Cosmopolitan, Maxim, Good Housekeeping, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Atlanta Constitution, BBC Radio and Deutsche Welle to name a few.

I also have a column with the Examiner that I should update more.

My favorite arena is radio. I did it in high school and college, and have been doing voice-overs for decades for video games like Star Trek, Top Gun, Psychonauts and commercials and I also wrote the House of Blues Radio Hour for Dan Aykroyd for a number of years which was great fun.

I was a writer for the Emmy nominated PBS Television show The Durst Amendment starring my dear friend and amazingly talented political comic Will Durst.

More recently I headlined the Cologne International Comedy Festival and in December of 2011, I was the subject of a documentary on Estonian Television. And I just finished a tour of Estonia, doing stand up in Estonian.

When not appearing in comedy clubs around the world, I continue to write and I work with my colleague, the British actor and playwright Tony Dunham, doing a show called A Special Relationship.